This blog is for helping you to see through a misunderstanding that stops people from creating the results they want, and from living a life they love. It’s responsible for many of the problems we experience as individuals, in organisations and as an entire species. Please don’t take my word for it; instead, I invite you to explore the materials here, make up your own mind, and start experiencing the benefits in your life. Here you will find free articles & videos on Clarity.

In this episode of the get clarity podcast, you’re going to hear a conversation I had with two of my dearest friends, colleagues and mentors – these are people who’ve had a profound impact on my work and in my life, so I’m really excited to share them with you. And a few pieces of housekeeping before we start:

First of all, this is the final podcast before we pause for the holidays, so I just want to take a moment to wish you and your loved ones a happy, peaceful and restful time over the next few weeks. I know for a lot of people, this can be quite a challenging time of the year, so it can be worth remembering to take it easy on yourself and the on people you care about. A little kindness goes a long way, so I encourage to start by being kind to yourself. At Clarity HQ, our vision is to inspire and educate a generation to experience lives of clarity, resilience and wellbeing, and we believe the most valuable thing a person can discover is how their mind works, so they can remember who they really are. So in relation to that, we’ve got some very cool brand new stuff planned for 2019, so I’ll be telling you all about that in the weeks and months ahead.

“Most people tiptoe through life, hoping to make it safely to death.” Earl Nightingale, Author, speaker, radio personality

This is my last JST before we pause for the holidays, so I just want to take a moment to wish you and your loved ones a happy, peaceful and restful time over the next few weeks. I know for some people, this can be quite a challenging time of the year, so it can be worth remembering to take it easy on yourself and on the people you care about. A little kindness goes a long way, so I encourage you to start by being kind to yourself. At Clarity HQ, we believe the most valuable thing a person can do is discover how their mind works so they can wake to the truth of who they really are. We’ve got some very cool, brand new stuff planned for 2019 in relation to this, so I’ll be telling you all about it in the weeks and months ahead.

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
Ray Kurzweil is one of the most accurate futurists of all time. In the 1990s he made over 140 predictions about what life would be like today. 86% of them were accurate and timely. One of the things that informs his predictions as a futurist is his understanding of the exponential nature of technology:

“Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.”

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
I’ve been listening to an old Syd Banks recording (one I’ve heard many times) but these sentences leapt out at me today. Of course, Banks would be the first to say that you can’t actually get rid of the ego, but the thing that struck me here was this: that phrase, “Oh God, I want nothing to do with it.” I suddenly heard the ‘aversion’ to the ego; the instinctive sense that while it may always be with us, it isn’t worth paying attention to.

“You gotta destroy the ego… throw it away, oh God I want nothing to do with it… really, this is where freedom is…”

Last weekend was module 3 of the 10-month Clarity Coach Training programme. On the very first module, back in September, I did a 1:1 coaching session with Anna Foakes. Anna is a therapist who’s passionate about making a difference to her clients, but who experienced stress and “social anxiety” when she was in larger groups of people. She volunteered to do a coaching demo with me, and it turned it to be fascinating for a number of reasons:

Almost everyone who gets impacted by the principles behind clarity asks some flavour of the question, “Why doesn’t everybody know this?” This is often followed by a deep desire to “get this out there”; to share what they’ve realised with people they care about (an endeavour that sometimes proves more challenging than expected). In this article we’re going to look at the essence of sharing this understanding with another person (or group of people).

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
At last week’s Resilient Young Minds conference, my friend and colleague Dr Rani Bora gave a beautiful talk called, “No-one Is Broken.” Rani’s a psychiatrist, and she explained that the word “psychiatry” means “medicine for the soul (it comes from the words “psyche” meaning soul and “iatre” meaning medicine). Then she asked this question:

“What medicine does a soul need? I’m posing that to you, because how will we ever find it? Will it come in lotions, in potions? Is it going to be tablets, capsules? And in what dose? As physicians, one of the things we have is a prescription pad. And a wise physician once said, “If someone is really struggling, give them love.” He was asked what to do if that doesn’t work, and he replied, “Increase the dose.”

In this episode of the get clarity podcast, you’re going to hear a keynote speech I gave at the Resilient Young Minds conference recently. The conference was attended by Teachers, school leaders, Youth Workers, Charity workers, Coaches, Parents, Business owners and a number of young people who joined us. The conference set out to demonstrate that young people:
– Are not broken
– Do not need to be ‘fixed’
– Have resilience, resourcefulness and wellbeing inbuilt

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to young people – it applies to all of us. I was joined by many friends and colleagues, and it was really heartening to see how many young people and people who support young people are being moved by this understanding.

Last week I spoke at 2 conferences, the Ignite Conference in St Gallen, Switzerland and the Resilient Young Minds (RYM) Conference in Devon, UK (we’re going to be releasing my 15-minute keynote from the Devon conference on the Get Clarity Podcast later this week, so look out for that). On the surface, my topic for each conference was quite different, but the core of what I shared with each audience was the same, so that’s what this week’s article is about: the heart of clarity, resilience and wellbeing.

So let me set the scene. The audience at Ignite were business school students at St Gallen University, so my topic was ‘The Power of Purpose’ (a subject close to their hearts). At the RYM conference, the audience was a mix of young people and people who work with young people and my topic was ‘A Vision For The Future’, however… an earlier promotional piece for the conference had said I’d be talking about ‘Resolving the roots of youth violence’, so I wanted to make sure I covered that too!

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
Today I’m in Zurich, speaking at the Ignite business conference https://www.ignite-movement.com/conference-2018 at the University of St Gallen on the subject of purpose. Then on Friday, I’m in the southwest of England speaking at the Resilient Young Minds conference (the in-room places are sold out, but you can still get a live-stream ticket if you want to join us – book your place here https://www.tickettailor.com/events/theclayfactory/185546). I’m going to be painting a vision for the future, and I’m reminded once again that the principles Sydney Banks discovered represent a paradigm shift; a genuine revolution for the field of psychology. To get a sense of what a true paradigm shift really means, I’m reflecting on this passage from John Waller’s excellent book, The Discovery of the Germ: Twenty Years That Transformed The Way We Think About Disease.